Economic Survey: Agriculture sector fails to to meet growth target

Wheat, maize, rice and sugarcane post positive growth, cotton production shrinks

KARACHI: The agriculture sector – which enjoys about 21.4% share in country’s GDP – has posted a lower than expected growth of 2.1% in fiscal year 2013-14 compared to 2.9% growth in the previous fiscal year and missing this years growth target of 3.6%, the Economic Survey of Pakistan 2013-14 released on Monday revealed.

The dismal performance of the sector is disturbing for the government. Federal Minister for Finance Ishaq Dar, while presenting the Economic Survey 2013-14 on Monday, said that the government will look into why the growth in agriculture sector has remained low.



“Looking at the dismal growth of agriculture sector, one can easily say that this sector is not on the priority list of this government,” Sindh Abadkar Board President Abdul Majid Nizamani told The Express Tribune.

Nizamani further said that the problems of agriculture sector continue to haunt this government unless it tries to provide major inputs like fertilizer at cheaper rates to the farmers.

Farmers Association of Pakistan (FAP) Director Rabia Sultan commented that the dismal performance of agriculture sector should be a cause of concern for the government.

“The government needs to see why agriculture sector is performing badly for the last two years,” Sultan added.

In fiscal year 2012, the growth of agriculture was 3.6%.

Lower than expected growth in the agriculture sector can be attributed to the low growth in the livestock stock sector, which contributes a lion’s share of 56% in agriculture sector.

The livestock sector exhibited a growth of 2.9% in 2013-14 compared to 3.5% in the previous year.

However, the growth in agriculture sector was strongly supported by the output of important crops. The important crops – that have 26% share in agriculture sector – has experienced a growth of 3.7% in fiscal year 2013-14 against growth of 1.2% during the same period of last year.

The important crops performed well on the back of positive growth in production of rice, maize, wheat and sugarcane all these crops witnessed increase in production by 22.8%, 7.3%, 4.4% and 4.3%, respectively. However, a decline of 2% was witnessed in the production of cotton.

Other crops that contribute 11.6% value addition in agriculture sector witnessed a decline of 3.5% during 2013-14 against positive growth of 6.1% during the same period last year, which is due to a decrease in the production of pulses, vegetables and fruits.

Other subsectors of the agriculture sector – that have a small share of just 6% – have performed well in the outgoing year.

Cotton ginning witnessed a decline of 1.3% in its growth against the negative growth of 2.9% during the same period 2012-13. The fishing sector, which has a share of only 2% in agriculture value addition, showed a growth of 1.0% against last year’s growth of 0.7%. The forestry subsector posted a growth of 1.5% this year as compared to a growth of 1% last year.